Wanch this is not true I assure you. It really depends on the district and the city, some of the poorest HLM projects are indeed made up of people of west/north-african, carribean, portuguese etc. But not every single HLM project in France is akin to the "4000" in La Courneuve.

There are no real ethnic ghettos in France exept for a few exeptions, just some impoverished districts and projects with variable poverty, and in many cases, since discrimination and social reproduction are strong, this coincide with having a lot of non white-french inhabitants as well.

I know loads of white-french people who live in HLM housing, includings parts of my family.

Also remember that France is not all Paris-Lyon-Marseille, every city, by law, has HLM housing, and not all french cities are as multiethnic as Paris or Lyon, far from it.

They the minorities make up the majority in HLM housing. Ethnic French living in them are very low.

It's not because some housing projects in France are predominantly inhabited by immigrants or by French from immigrant background (minorities), that it means that in all the housing projects (HLM), the minorities make up the majority !
There are millions of what you call "ethnic French" living in HLM.

Some of the nicest public housing I've seen in NZ! I'll have to go taking some photos around South Auckland as vast swathes of Otara, Otahuhu, East Tamaki, New Papatoetoe, Mangere, Old Manurewa et al look nothing like as good as those!

There are also some pretty grungy areas in Rotorua too that looked every bit as bad as the worst in Otara. I didn't feel particularly safe walking around there during the day.

I think the big difference between that picture and the housing estates of most of Otara is the density. A lot of Otara is pretty darned dense on a NZ scale with houses packed onto very small lots of land. This tends to lead to slightly more dereliction and more rubbish piled around as witnessed near MIT and the Otara Bus Exchange.

The above photo is of Porirua. One of the largest estates in the country.
The 5th photo is in Otara. There are various parts to it and unfortunatley I couldnt find the real grungy stuff on google. The last pic is Glen Innes, the 2nd pic is Masterton I beleive

I find the Melbourne housing commission flats you refer to remind me a lot of the old and extremely notorious Robert Taylor Homes projects on Chicago's South Side (now demolished). There were a few dozen of these blocks and they stretched for about 2miles.

Is that the project in the film 'Candyman'? That was Cabrini Green, right?

Cité du Grand-Parc, biggest public housing in the city. Contrary to most of this kind of areas this one got not special social problems. One of the reason is it good geographical situation in the city (in the inner city, not in the far suburbs).

Cité Saige-Formanoir à Pessac (Bordeaux suburbs)

Mérignac

Cité des Aubiers, it had for a long time bad reputation in Bordeaux. Situate in the middle of nowhere, exept a big mall, as usual in France for this kind of neighborhoods. Actually in renewal with the new tramway.

I made a little video by driving through a typical Dutch social housing neighborhood. It is taken in my hometown Zwolle, a city of 116,000 the capital of the province of Overijssel. The video was taken in "Holtenbroek", a typical 1960's neighborhood.

Here's a video that shows a few of SF's projects (Sunnydale amd Potrero Hill, and Oakdale, Westpoint, Double Rock, and Hunters View, all in Hunters Point . In the beginning it shows the tenderloin, but projects come after:

Or just like public housing in northern Germany. In southern Germany they have white facades instead of the bricks.

__________________Isaiah 28:2Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand.

Matthew 7:25
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.